Supreme Court Turns Miranda Ruling On Its Head

The Miranda Law, which gives one a right to remain silent upon being arrested, can only be invoked now when a suspect speaks. The Supreme Court ruled that a suspect must explicitly state that he or she wants to remain silent for the rule to take effect.

“Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counterintuitively, requires them to speak,” she said. “At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.”

The ruling is based on a case where a suspect said little during an interrogation, but was convicted based on something he said after a period of remaining silent. He claimed that he had invoked Miranda. A Cincinnati appeals court agreed and threw out his case, but the Supreme Court overturned that decision.